See
also Yvonne Vera, catalogue
In alphabetical order ...
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was a 2005-2006 Hodder Fellow
at Princeton, where she taught Introductory Fiction, and is currently
pursuing graduate work in the African Studies program at Yale. She divides
her time between the United States and Nigeria.
Her first novel, Purple Hibiscus, won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. It was also short-listed for the Orange Prize and the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and long-listed for the Booker Prize. Half of a Yellow Sun, her second novel, was published to great acclaim last year. Her short fiction has appeared in Granta, Prospect, and The New Yorker among other literary journals, and she received the O. Henry Prize in 2003.
Adichie said the following about why she wrote Purple
Hibiscus:
'… because, after finishing a huge novel about immigrants which was not good and now languishes in the dusty space under my bed, I wanted to write about the things I truly care about. I was homesick. It was winter in the small Connecticut town where I was a final year undergraduate. I am interested in that curious blend of colonialism and religion that results in a particular kind of African Christianity; in family and the complicated ways in which we love our family; in how politics affects our lives; in femalehood and feminism and gender; in what it means to come to a knowledge of the self. For me, Purple Hibiscus was my exploration of all of these.’
Julius Chingono, who was born on a commercial farm in
1946, worked for most of his life on the mines. As a poet, he has had
his work published in several anthologies of Shona poetry including Nhetembo, Mabvumira
eNhetembo and Gwenyambira between 1968 and 1980. His only
novel, Chipo Changu was published in 1978 and an award-winning
play, Ruvimbo, was published in 1980. His poetry in English
has also been published in several South African and Zimbabwean anthologies: Flags
of Love (Mireza yerudo)(1983) and Flag of Rags (1996).
He has a short story in each of the collections Writing Still (2003)
and Writing Now (2005). Weaver Press published his own collection
of short stories, Not Another Day in 2006.
Of this he says:
'I wrote the stories because so few people outside seem to know anything about Zimbabwe now.’
Shimmer Chinodya was born in Gweru,
Zimbabwe, in 1957, the second child in a large, erstwhile happy family.
He studied English Literature and Education at the University of Zimbabwe
and, after a spell in teaching and curriculum development, he joined
the Iowa Writers’ Workshop
(USA) where he earned an MA in Creative Writing. From 1995 to 1997 he
was Distinguished Visiting Professor in Creative Writing and African
Literature at the University of St Lawrence, New York State.
Chinodya has published eight novels and his writings also appear in numerous
anthologies, including Soho Square, Writers’ Territory, Tenderfoots, Writing
Still and Writing Now. He has also written children’s
books, educational texts and radio and film scripts. Chinodya’s
fiction has won him many awards, including the Commonwealth Writers Prize
(Africa Region), an Honourable Mention for Harvest of Thorns,
a Caine Prize shortlisting for Can we talk and the NAMA award
for Strife.
On why he writes, Chinodya says :
'I developed an early interest in writing – and, conversely, reading; by the time I finished primary school I knew I wanted to be a writer … My fiction seeks to explore and extend the borders of reality, to question and tease matters of identity, class and culture, the past, present and future; to explore the human condition in the most interesting and sensitive way possible. Every time I put pen to paper I ask myself, ‘What can my writing do for me and for the world? How can I refine my voice? How can I shock my reader into reflecting on the subject of existence? What is existence anyway, and what is the truth, perceived and otherwise? Can I grab my reader by the collar until he or she gasps: ‘Gosh, I didn’t know it was possible to do this in a story, to write this way!’
As a black writer I obviously and primarily seek to portray an African worldview but I want my literature to ultimately speak to the world as a whole. My works are experiments on the effects of time and change on humans, and human relationships tangled in the eternal quest for happiness and fulfilment. I perpetually seek a harmonious fusion of theme and style. I’d hate to write a single boring paragraph. I believe a good book should exalt the heart and mind of the reader and NOT punish him/her and that lazy, boring writers should be dragged out to the market place and flogged in public!’
Wonder Guchu is currently a journalist with The
Herald newspaper in Harare. He was born in 1969 near Mvurwi and
trained as a teacher of English at Gweru Teachers' College between
1988 and 1990. He subsequently spent five years teaching Masvingo and
six in Harare. By this time he had been writing stories and poems for
nine years, some of which were published in The Sunday Mail magazine, Tsotso and Moto.
He also reviewed books for The Masvingo Star, The Independent, Parade, The
Herald, The Sunday Standard and The Daily News, and was the
music critic for the now defunct Masvingo Tribune. He is married
with two children.
On Sketches of High Density Life, Guchu says that:
'The stories were conceived from my stay in Highfield during the years when every weekend ended with the discovery of a dead body, either at a street corner or at the banks of Mukuvisi River that runs past the township. Some of these were fathers or brothers we had grown up with and got to know well. We knew their families, their problems, their happiness and, above all, we later got to know how they died. We knew some of the perpetrators of these murders, too. We had grown up originally respecting them as brothers, but the township changed them. I saw all this and was frightened. Somehow it all became very much a part of my life. It stayed in my subconscious but when I started writing, some of the incidents resurfaced. Most of the tales were born from such realities and the people whom I grew up with can link each and every story to what we all saw as youths.’
Derek Huggins opened Gallery Delta in 1975 for the
promotion of contemporary painting, and is still managing this artists’ venue.
Concurrently, he was the Chief Executive of the National Arts Foundation
from 1975 to 1988, and published Arts Rhodesia and Arts Zimbabwe. Between
1994 and 2002, he published Gallery, an art magazine to which he was
a frequent contributor. Over a period of thirty years he has intermittently
written short stories but only latterly sought publication. Stained
Earth, his first anthology of stories, was published in 2005; he
has also been published in Writing Still and in Short Writings
from Bulawayo (Vols I and II.).
Of writing, he says that:
'For me, writing is a compulsion that flares up and wanes but never entirely goes away. Living with – and thinking around – the writing is as essential to me as the actual writing. Thus writing and its processes becomes a pleasurable companion. Creativity blocks and counters the destructive. It thwarts those anxious and confusing thoughts that lead to boredom, depression and despair. There are spiritual aspects involved in this process. There is always, however, the battle for the mind. Trepidation, nervousness, and doubt have to be overcome. And, with my everyday work and my own tendency to prevaricate, the main problem is to begin and remain. I can find it difficult to regularly write seriously and creatively, but when I do, I experience contentment – It is the wresting of a part of myself for myself.
The stories in Stained Earth were the product of a long bout of such wrestling. Written over many decades, with many starts and false finishes, when compulsion overcame cowardice. In 2002, I felt they were sufficiently formed and deep to perhaps share, a thought that became concrete when the late Yvonne Vera encouraged me to seek their publication.'
Binwell Sinyangwe was born in Zambia
in 1956. As a young adult, he completed his university education as an
Economist in 1983. His post-graduate career has been dominated by promotional
work related to private sector development and has involved significant
travel within and outside of Africa. Since 2000 he has worked independently
as a private management and projects consultant for government,
regional bodies and other institutions.
Quills of Desire, his first novel, was published in Zimbabwe
by Baobab Books in 1993 and by Heinemann (SA) in 1996. A Cowrie of
Hope, his second novel, was published by Heinemann as part of the
African Writers Series in 2000; and by Weaver Press in Zimbabwe in 2007.
His short stories, poems and articles have also appeared in various publications.
A Cowrie of Hope was written, he says, to:
'celebrate the female principle and the power of the human spirit set against a devastating backdrop of the hard and harsh economic and social realities which prevail in poor and backward African countries like Zambia. Writing the work at the time I did, one whole year of tears and literary inactivity following my late wife’s sudden demise from a stroke, was a catharsis for me. It was a healing process in which I shed tears of final acceptance that my wife was truly gone for good but life must go on and I should get back to enjoying my hard and painful craft, writing.’
Valerie Joan Tagwira is a medical doctor who
graduated from the University of Zimbabwe’s Medical School in 1997. She
has a strong interest in health-related and developmental issues that affect
women. She is currently studying towards her membership exams for the
Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists while working in London. Tagwira has just been awarded the National Arts Merit Award (NAMA) for literature in 2008 for The
Uncertainty of Hope.
Of this, her first novel, she says:
'I wrote the stories because so few people outside seem to know anything about Zimbabwe now. Though I had often thought about writing in the past, the decision to commit myself came out of a desire to do something different began as an exploration in creativity, something that one doesn’t practise in the medical field. At the same time, I realised that this was an opportunity to explore health-related and developmental issues that affect women, as these are matters that I am very interested in. Being something of a ‘mild feminist’, and having always had a sense of wanting to improve the lives of women, I knew that my first novel would be based around strong female characters.
My inspiration developed from these interests, as well as the fact that I am a woman. I am only too aware of the challenges that we all face, regardless of socioeconomic class or level of education. It was therefore a natural choice to write about poverty, homelessness, domestic violence, HIV/AIDS and a host of other socioeconomic difficulties that women have to contend with.
Including matters that might be considered as controversial in modern day Zimbabwe was also unavoidable as these are issues that have touched the majority of Zimbabwean women and inevitably, the children in their lives. The arts in their various forms are a way of raising awareness about social issues and hopefully, the novel will achieve that to whatever extent.'